BIC AI Mechanical Pencil Review

BIC AI Mechanical Pencil Review

To be honest I normally associate the BIC brand with reliable, value for money, economy price range products, including their mechanical pencils. I was a little surprised to recently see a new (at least to me) model of BIC mechanical pencil in a local store and both its price tag and appearance were a step above the norm for BIC. I decided to take a chance and buy it.

First then the visual appearance. To my eyes the BIC AI mechanical pencil is dominated by a large almost oversize looking chrome pocket clip. It really does stand out against the dark blue and black body. I won’t say that the AI is a beautiful or classic looking mechanical pencil but it is eye-catching, and not in an eyesore sort of way.

In the hand the AI is relatively lightweight as expected. The balance is noticeably slightly top heavy, although that top heavy feeling is not totally backed up by the position of the centre of balance measurement. The AI mechanical pencil has a rubber grip zone. The rubber grip has a slightly bulbous contour and a smooth surface apart from one grooved line running through it. The rubber material is quite hard and only of limited grippy-ness factor. Basically it’s one of those rubber grips that don’t rate highly with me. At just over 11mm (7/16th inch) diameter the grip is on the wider side of town and it’s bulbous contour isn’t really to my personal liking.

I have previously mentioned the large pocket clip, which is chrome plated plastic. It is not sprung, but quite stiff and reliable.
My AI mechanical pencil is 0.7mm lead size, and was supplied with a spare container of BIC lead refills.

There is a small eraser beneath the top button, and you pull the eraser out to access the lead refill magazine which doesn’t hold a large number of refills.

Now then, onto the main feature of the AI mechanical pencil – it’s lead advance mechanism. It is a push top ratchet advance mechanism with the addition of a shaker, and it is also an auto-advancer. Let’s take these one at a time. Firstly as an ordinary push top ratchet mechanism it feels a good positive mechanism, with a positive click and a rather long activation stroke.

Ten clicks will get you about 8mm of 0.7mm lead. The shaker mechanism works well, and seems about the right sensitivity – you don’t have to shake it too hard but equally it isn’t too sensitive to inadvertent movements. One problem I did have though is feeding new leads. On several occasions when an old stick of lead had worn out a new one just would not feed through from the lead magazine and I had to resort to sticking one in through the spout, so to speak. Other times though new leads would feed from the magazine. Perhaps some minor difference in lead diameter, or some contour on the end of a particular stick of lead causes it to catch and not feed through…who knows?

Lastly then we come to the auto-advance feature of the AI. Now I have previously reviewed a few auto-advance mechanical pencils and generally been on the unimpressed side of the fence. So then, trying to keep a positive frame of mind, what about the BIC AI mechanical pencil?

Firstly then the tip or lead sleeve is a short conical plastic sleeve and it is not retractable. Just to be clear though, you can retract the lead back inside the pencil. When writing with this pencil and the lead wears down enough to trigger the auto-advance feature you don’t really notice it. Sometimes the line you write is definitely lighter than normal, sometimes you can notice some drag-through effect as you cross back over an existing line on the paper but overall it’s pretty good. Whilst mechanical pencil nuts might notice these things I’m not sure the general public would, or would care if they did. Like all auto-advancers I know, this one works best with frequent removal from the paper. Lifting the lead on and off the paper allows the auto-advance to activate so drawing long lines or writing long connected cursive script can cause some problems.

The lead sleeve (tip) does have some small amount of bend or wobble it. Those of you who demand precision, then stay away. Personally I can live with it for normal writing purposes but I did note sometimes my line was not quite exactly where I intended. This was exacerbated when using auto-advance because you don’t really have an easily visible lead tip to place on the paper. As always I would suggest you use the auto-advance feature only as a back-up. Use the push top button or shaker to routinely advance lead, and let the auto-advancer kick in only temporarily.

Having said all that above, the BIC AI auto-advance has one feature that took me by surprise. No plunging. Now I don’t know if this is a new and improved mechanism that has eliminated the dreaded plunging, or somehow my particular pencil was immune to it, but it made a huge difference to me. I hate it when auto-advancers plunge. You are writing away and suddenly the pencil seems to plunge forward into the paper, or the tip slowly disappears back up inside the pencil. Grrrrrrr! Well, my AI had none of that. It was a very pleasant surprise, and I take my hat off to BIC and the factory in China that makes this mechanical pencil.

At the beginning of this post I wrote, “I decided to take a chance and buy it" (BIC AI). Well, because of the workable auto-advance mechanism it was worth it, lady luck was smiling on me that day.

• Best Points – An auto-advance mechanism that is actually acceptable.
• Not So Good Points – I’m sure they could do better with the grip.
• Price Range – Low.
• Does this pencil make it into the Top 5? - No.

Dimensions – Length 144mm, diameter 11mm at widest part of grip. Balance point about 75mm up from the tip.